use in telephones

...prompted a number of inventors to pursue further work in this area. Among them was Thomas Alva Edison, whose 1886 design for a voice transmitter consisted of a cavity filled with granules of carbonized anthracite coal. The carbon granules were confined between two electrodes through which a constant electric current was passed. One of the electrodes was attached to a thin iron diaphragm,...

work by Edison

...and improve the audibility of the telephone, a device that Edison and others had studied but which Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent, in 1876. By the end of 1877 Edison had developed the carbon-button transmitter that is still used in telephone speakers and microphones.